Dems hit Rice, Goodling with subpoenas

In a flurry of legislative oversight, Democrats subpoenaed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a top aide to embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales within hours of each other Wednesday morning.

The subpoenas ratchet up ongoing investigations over the pre-war intelligence for Iraq and a separate probe into the firing of eight fired U.S. attorneys.

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Republicans took a passive approach to the early wave of oversight hearings in both chambers, but the Rice subpoena stirred rebellion in the minority party. In numerous comments throughout the day, GOP lawmakers signaled they will be less compliant in the future.

The House Judiciary Committee sparked the oversight rush by authorizing a subpoena late Wednesday morning for Monica Goodling, a former top aide to Gonzales who served as his top liaison with the White House during sensitive discussions about the firing of the federal prosecutors. In issuing its subpoena, the committee granted her immunity from further prosecution for what she says during her testimony.

Then, shortly after noon, the House Government Reform Committee authorized the subpoena for Rice, 21-10, as part of its ongoing investigation into the Bush administration’s claim that Iraqi official sought the materials for a nuclear weapon from Africa as part of its justification for the invasion.

The party line vote means Rice must testify before the committee about what she knew when President Bush made those claims during his 2003 State of the Union address – as well as “other matters,” Oversight Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said.

Republicans derided the subpoena in a press conference on Tuesday as “a partisan witch hunt” meant to keep this story in the spotlight.

On a separate party-line vote, the committee also voted to subpoena emails and other documents from the Republican National Committee as part of its investigation into separate violations of both the Hatch Act and the President Records Act.

The committee discovered that a top White House political deputy briefed political employees of the General Services Administration earlier this year about the Republican Party’s congressional outlook for 2008. That investigation evolved into a separate probe about White House officials improperly using outside email accounts to discuss politically sensitive information.

In a bit of partisan gamesmanship, committee Republicans sought to broaden the subpoenas to include comparable Democratic National Committee documents as well as former Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who took intelligence papers from the National Archives during the 9/11 Commission’s investigation of Clinton-era intelligence. Waxman ruled the amendments out of order for lacking relevance to the scope of the RNC subpoena.

Republicans on the panel charged Waxman and committee Democrats with attempting to drive the RNC into debt by forcing it to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees to comply with the subpoena.

The chairman countered that Republicans similarly forced the DNC to produce 600,000-plus pages of documents into their investigation of the Clinton fundraising apparatus that eventually included more than 1,000 subpoenas.

Waxman retreated from his pledge to offer separate subpoenas to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and administration contacts with officials from MZM, Inc., the defense contractor implicated in the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal. Waxman wants to question Card questions about the leak of former covert CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name in conjunction with President Bush’s 2003 Iraq nuclear program claims.

The Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, voted to subpoena Goodling after the committee initially postponed the vote last week at the request of Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the panel’s ranking Republican.

Goodling served as the attorney general’s top liaison with the White House during the deliberations over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. She resigned abruptly last month after threatening to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in an attempt to avoid testimony before the committee.

“I believe it is prudent that we proceed with the process of considering immunity for Ms. Goodling,” Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) said in his opening statement Wednesday morning.

Goodling was “involved in crucial discussions over a two-year period with senior White House aides, and with other senior Justice officials, in which the termination list was developed, refined, and finalized,” Conyers said, according to a copy of his speech provided by the committee.

As a former top counsel at Justice, Goodling also helped prepare Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and his principal associate William Moschella for congressional testimony in which the two made alleged misstatements about the department’s motivation for the firings.

Republican Reps. Chris Cannon of Utah, Randy J. Forbes of Virginia, Trent Franks of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Steve King of Iowa and former Chairman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin all voted against granting her immunity.

“This sideshow of the surreal continues unabated," Cannon said. "This grant of immunity is nothing more than a desperate attempt to keep this story alive.

“Political appointees, removed for political reasons, are being investigated by a political body, with political motivations, seeking to damage political opponents," he added. "Eventually this merry-go-round of the obvious has to stop.”

Smith reluctantly voted to support both the subpoena and immunity while warning members that the committee was setting a dangerous precedent.

“My vote today should not be considered a precedent for supporting immunity or subpoena in future cases,” Smith said, according to a copy of his statement. “Every case must be case must be considered separately. A grant of immunity should not be a Committee’s automatic next step when an investigation does not progress the way we would like.”

Smith also expressed concern that “selective leaks…have skewed the public’s perception of whether any wrongdoing actually occurred.” And he remains troubled that Republicans, in his eyes, have been denied “an equal opportunity to ask questions.”